In Japanese, the modification of a noun by an adjective is expressed by putting an adjective in front of the noun it modifies. Young children, however, tend to insert a particle no (English equivalent of of or 's) between the adjective and the noun, i.e., adjective - no - noun. This is an error. To determine the period of its occurrence and the reason for this error, data were gathered by longitudinal observation of the spontaneous speech that two Japanese children produced from the age of 10 months to 2; 11 years. Results show that this type of error appeared between the latter half of the second year and the first half of the 3rd year. The errors were interpreted as an overgeneralization of the usage of noun - no- noun, a correct construction that the children frequently used before the appearance of the errors. Moreover, it was suggested that the use of particle no as a nominalizer might also be concerned with the errors. Developmental implications of this error are discussed in terms of the acquisition process of case particle no and that of adjective and adjective -noun construction.

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Many Japanese girls seem to continue to play make-believe using commercial dolls after their early childhood. The kinds of developmental changes that happen to these girls, however, has not been investigated. In this study we observed 27 groups (9 groups at each of three elementary school grades, 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6) each of which was composed of 2 to 6 girls. Their playing with commercial dolls was audiotaped. We found that everyday script-based activities in home-and school-life were played more often than non-everyday activities such as a wedding, but that older graders tended to engage in non-everyday activities more often than younger Often played script-based activities were "getting-up", "dining", and "going-to-bed". Among these only in the going-to-bed script the children's utterances per slot increased with age. The number of different meanings acted out in each script increased with age. One type of meta-narratives, i.e., upsetting the play frame itself, also increased with age. These last two trends were considered to be unique to higher graders.

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This is a study of how an infant develops the concept of "mouth" through interaction with his parents and close relatives in his first year of life. For grown-ups, there is hardly any doubt that their mouths are isomorphic in shape and function to those of others. This type of cognizance develops quite early in an infant's life. At three months, he begins to eagerly watch others' eating while sitting on a parent's lap. At five months, he sits on a high chair at meal time and begins to show interest in the food others are eating. At seven months, he occasionally makes a motion of feeding others. Five different types of feeding behavior appear successively. The fifth type is the behavior of feeding doll, which appears at eleven months. At this stage of development, the infant is assumed to have recognized the isomorphism in shape and function between his mouth and others. It is argued that an infant acquires the concept of "mouth" in such a dynamic social context.

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The purpose of this study was to examine what role "deficit-complement" schema played in a thematic integration of narrative sequences and how the schema developed. Eighty-four4-year-old (4:10-5:5) and 5-year-old 5:10-6:5) children were divided into three homogeneous groups (14 subjects each), and assigned to one of three conditions : the deficit condition where the children were informed that the character was in the deficit state, the non-deficit condition where they were informed that the character was in the complement state, and the control condition where no information about the character was given. The children were shown a drawing story, asked to describe each picture and, after interpreting all the pictures, to recall the story without the pictures, to answer 10 questions about the character's feeling. The results showed that the children in the deficit condition could grasped the pictures as a story, and construct the thematic and coherent interpretation of them, while the children in the other two conditions often failed to integrate the pictures into a story. Especially, in the non-deficit condition, the degree of erabolation of description were lower than in the other two conditions. In the recall and comprehension tasks, these trends were confirmed. From these results, it was suggested that the information about the the deficitsituation of the character enhanced the integration of narrative sequences as a cognitive framework through the activation of 'deficit-complement' schema.

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Knowledge of Logical Structures in Expository Texts and Its Utilization of Elementary School Children. This study investigated how children's knowledge of logical structures in expository texts is developed and how children utilized it to construct or comprehend a text. Experiment was consisted of two tasks : a sentence-arrangement task and a text comprehension test. Four types of text differed in two logical structures (Modus Ponens and Constructive Dilemma) and levels of familiarity with topics (high and low). Subjects were 39 fourth, 45 fifth, and 55 sixth graders. The results were as follows. For constructing the expository texts, the children could start utilizing the knowledge of Modus Ponens from fifth graders and Constructive Dilemma from sixth graders. The factors influencing the level of comprehending a text were different between two logical structures. For Modus Ponens, a close relationship was found between grade and the level of comprehension. On the other hand, for Constructive Dilemma, the children who utilized its knowledge appropriately could comprehend the content more correctly regardless of grades.

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The purpose of this study is to develop four scales called SRC I, SRC II, MC I and MC II in order to investigate a relation among the development of preschoolers' self-regulatory behavior, their temperament types defined by Thomas, et al., and their mothers' control types. SRC I scale consisting of 60 items about self-regulation and their temperament, and MC I scale consisting of 65 items about mothers' control were tested to 1375 mothers. SRC II and MC II scale consisting of each 46 items were tested to 331 mothers. Then, factor analysis was applied to the 4 scales, and factor scores were calculated to diaguose the preschoolers' self-regulation types and their mothers' control types. Mothers were divided into 3 groups (H・M・L) by a quartile range. The structure of SRC scale were explained by the following factors ; "Utype" yielded three theoretical factors self-inhibition, self-assertion and difficulty ; "J type" yielded three practical factors based on their mothers' developmental expectancy, troublesomeness, obedience and willfulness. The structure of MC scale can be explained by 3 factors, which can be called as external control, self-education and insensitive control. As to the relation between SRC and MC scale, even if self-regulation type classified by U type factors is the same, we obsered types classified by J type factors to be different due to their mothers' control types.

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The incidence of "transitional objects" (TOs), first used by Winnicott (1953) to refer to inanimate objects often specially beloved in infancy and early childhood, was studied in 951 normal children. Approximately one-third (38%) had formed an attachment to an object. Some significant differences between children with TOs and without TOs did appear : more of the children with TOs were bottle-fed, regularly-fed and weaned earlier, and slept alone and/or in their own beds. Mothers of the children with TOs felt more inner conflict between child-rearing practices and their own interests. These findings imply that relatively stressful mother-infant interaction might be related to the development of infant's attachment to a TO. Theoretical implications and directions for continued study were considered. In addiuon the concept of "primary and secondary TOs" (Stevenson, 1954 etc.) was empirically examined.

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A longitudinal study was done to investigate the formation process of two concepts concerning intensive quantity, velocity and thickness, in children. For the study subjects were 38 elementary school children in the fifth grade. Two kinds of comparison tasks about intensive quantity and three kinds of logical operation tasks were administered three times semiannually. The results showed that learning of verocity in the classroom affected the formation process of these two concepts, that inverse intensive quantity came to be understood especially in velocity from fifth to sixth grade, and that some errors in thickness were caused by some imperfectness of logical operation. In general, the transiton from one stage to the next was gradual and there were various transition types in the formation process of each concept.

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